


Pages for Her

by janewithawhy



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Books, Bookstores, F/F, love of the irish, potentially pretentious title/name dropping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 16:26:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21359191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janewithawhy/pseuds/janewithawhy
Summary: A woman walks into a bookstore.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 43
Kudos: 509





	Pages for Her

**Author's Note:**

> For readers. For Dalia. 
> 
> And, like everything, for Emily.

Kara never really had a love affair for words the way most writers did. She had very distinct memories of Alex making fun of her for her aversion toward reading, even before—when they were just neighborhood friends instead of sisters. She didn’t grow up with that pull toward verbiage and syntax the way other people experienced and still found it difficult to truly appreciate poetry. 

As a journalist, Kara found words to be… finicky. More often than not, they encumbered. They hid fact behind connotation and tone. They could even lie when absent. Writing, then, was just a vehicle for Kara. Which meant that reading was just part of an obligation toward understanding. 

So, Kara never really loved bookstores. She never really liked the tacticality of novels and found those paperbacks with deckled edges to be annoying and pretentious. She hated the way newspaper ink stuck to her palms and wiped itself onto her pristine, white desk at work. When Eliza gifted her a Kindle, she thought it was the best thing ever (it was the same year that Alex received the entire print version of Marcel Proust’s _ In Search of Lost Time _, the version translated by James Grieve). She thought bookstores were antiquated and disorganized—relics meant to be ruins. 

Needless to say, it was an unexpected place for her to fall in love. But she did. Love of books notwithstanding. 

\--

Alex’s favorite bookstore was three blocks away from Kara’s apartment. Why her sister loved to peruse books with bent spines, dog-eared pages, and someone else’s notes in them, Kara had never been able to comprehend. They sold new books, too, though. And they were local and independently owned. 

The shop had creaky floorboards worn in places with heavier foot traffic. It stocked local zines and newspapers and held community events and launches. The owner was a woman named Lauren who said that she inherited it from her mother. It was closed on Tuesdays and boarded up early on Thursday evenings. Lauren had ash brown hair and might have been in her late 30s and she spoke with the most calming, even-keeled voice Kara had ever listened to. Sometimes she brought her dog to work, a black and white sheltie named Saunders that Kara took a liking to. 

Lauren knew everything about the neighborhood. She knew which restaurants were opening up where and when. She knew when the cafe down the street changed their roaster. She knew when people moved out or moved in, when some of the older neighbors had sadly passed away. Lauren even knew all of the surface level gossip that went on in the neighborhood. Like if Megan Down-the-Street was or was not in cahoots with Leigh From-the-Blue-House that week. She wasn’t a gossiper, but people gossiped in her store. 

She was a good source that Kara used when she could. And when Alex was taking too much time kneeling and looking at stacks of vintage fiction collections and Saunders wasn’t around for Kara to idly pet while she waited, Lauren was a nice distraction. 

Alex thumbed through several editions of Frank Herbert’s _ Dune _ while Kara sat in one of the comfy reading chairs by the front of the store, scratching Saunders on the nose. Lauren had her reading glasses on and was doing inventory, letting Kara talk in low tones to Saunders about how impatient she was, when a woman walked in, her arrival signaled by the tinkling of windchimes from just outside. Lauren placed her glasses on top of her head and smiled.

“Picking up an order?” she asked.

“Not just yet,” the woman said in return. She walked with purpose over to the new fiction section.

Kara watched the exchange with mild interest. The woman was attractive: startlingly so. It was the cut of her jaw and the strong angle she held her head. Not like everything was beneath her, but like at any moment something important could come up that she could be whisked away for. Even as she knelt at one shelf, she looked elegant and imposing.

“Hey Lauren,” Alex said, walking up to the counter. Kara’s eyes snapped to her sister. She had placed a new copy of _ Dune _ on the glass counter between herself and Lauren. Kara pat Saunders on the head one last time before standing. 

“That’s all you’re getting?” Kara asked.

Alex’s answer was one raised eyebrow. 

“I’ve been sitting here for an hour and you’re getting one brand new book?”

“Don’t act like Saunders isn’t your new best friend,” Alex said. 

Lauren chuckled and rang Alex up. “I’m discounting some speculative fiction next week, by the way. And a few history selections.”

That peaked Kara’s interests. 

“I mean, I didn’t need any more reasons to come by, but hey,” Alex shrugged, handing Lauren her card. “Whatever gets this one to stop complaining.”

“I don’t complain,” Kara said. “That much, anyway.”

“Adam’s supposed to bring Saunders in the afternoon next Saturday if that helps with your timing at all,” Lauren said, laughing. 

“Guess it’s a date,” Kara mumbled. Saunders nosed at her hand and Lauren printed Alex’s receipt. 

“See you next week, Lauren.”

Kara pat Saunders on the head once more, giving her a scratch behind the ears for good measure. She felt eyes on the back of her neck and turned, angled her body just enough to confirm that someone was looking at her. The woman who’d walked in earlier looked at Kara curiously, her head slightly tilted. There was a nice, smallish smile on the woman’s face—it made Kara smile back in return. 

Kara and Alex bickered about lunch on their way out, the windchimes that hung from the corner of the storefront not helping their argument at all. 

\--

“Tell her I don’t mind reading, Lauren,” Kara said the next Saturday. 

“I don’t mind reading, Lauren.”

Lauren stood at the counter, her wire frame glasses sitting on the bridge of her nose as she scrolled through her screen, doing inventory again. She never even looked up, but she smiled slightly. Kara rolled her eyes and pivoted, launching herself slightly off of the counter’s surface. 

“I thought we were friends,” Kara said. She plopped herself into a seat next to Saunders. Adam was in the back, organizing an order that’d come in unexpectedly that morning. “And you wound me like this.”

“Kara, you wound yourself. Go pick up a book and learn to appreciate words,” Lauren teased.

Kara made a face even though Lauren couldn’t see it. 

“Next you’ll tell me to start thumbing through poetry,” she mumbled. 

“I don’t understand how you can’t like poetry,” Alex said.

“It’s music but without all the fun of it being music. What is there to like?” Kara huffed. “You can’t dance to poetry. And all the metaphors don’t make any sense.”

Alex looked at her sister over the copy of Ruth Ozeki’s _ A Tale for the Time Being _ she was considering purchasing. One of the corners was bent. The wrinkles in its spine looked like a fractured river, running its course down the length of the book. Kara had a feeling Alex would choose that copy. Kara thought that Alex could collect jetsam if she could. Alex had a soft spot for things flung from their homes. Kara was grateful for it. 

“Stop bothering Lauren, and go pick something out to fill that empty head of yours with,” Alex said. “Go find a metaphor that makes sense.”

Kara rolled her eyes but went walking through the bookstore anyway. She passed the table with new paperback arrivals, hardly sparing it a glance, and went straight to a bookshelf filled with “blind dates”. They were books Lauren wrapped up with butchers paper and twine, hiding the titles and covers. She wrote her own summaries with a thick black sharpie and sometimes Adam did little illustrations. Kara loved looking at what new, mysterious selections Lauren had put out.

_ Surrealist fiction. Art theft leads to the worst scavenger hunt ever. _

_ Shorts. Science fiction. Women and their experiences in a world that is not their friend (sounds like reality but isn’t). _

_ Essays. Non-fiction. Art and burlesque in conversation. _

Some of the illustrations Adam had done on the wrapping made Kara snort with laughter as she picked up each covered booked. She had no intention of buying one, but they were fun to pass the time with while Alex mulled over previously abused paperback editions of whatever existed on her infinite reading list. Secretly, Kara thought that Alex liked buying used books so much because then people wouldn’t question whether or not her shelves at home were lined with books she had or had not read. 

Kara rounded the corner, intent on perusing the history section, but a woman knelt in front of the science and mathematics shelf, blocking her way. 

“Whoops,” Kara mumbled, stopping abruptly, precariously close to tripping over and onto the woman in front of her. 

When the woman glanced up at her, Kara was certain she’d never hated words more. Every description of the woman’s face, demeanor, and presence that flit through Kara’s consciousness seemed woefully inadequate to the reality in front of her. 

Kara once read about the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, Italy. It was the oldest hospital still active in the city, founded in the 13th century. Sometime in 1817, a French author named Marie-Henri Beyle visited the Basilica of Santa Croce. He became so overcome with emotion that he wrote about feeling faint and suffering from heart palpitations. The staff at Santa Maria Nuova are fairly accustomed to dealing with tourists who suffer these same, disorienting emotions upon admiring the Statue of David, exploring the Uffizi Gallery, and marveling at the Renaissance frescoes at Il Museo di San Marco. 

Though the condition isn’t an officially recognized mental or psychiatric disorder, it was named after Marie-Henri Beyle’s pen name. It’s known as Stendhal Syndrome and it’s what happens people feel faint from the experience of viewing particularly beautiful works of art. 

Over 100,000 words existed in the English language for Kara to use and she was stuck with a useless story about a made up psychosomatic disorder erroneously attributed to viewing art. 

“I’m sorry. I’m in your way,” the woman said politely. She moved to stand, her legs unfolding from underneath her so elegantly, Kara felt like she was watching one of those timelapse videos of a flower bloom. 

Kara opened and closed her mouth, resembling a fish out of water. 

“Er. It’s fine—I could’ve gone around. That was my fault,” she heard herself saying. Her feet shuffled backward, but the woman was already standing, and there was little space between the aisles where science and mathematics faced psychology and self-help. Despite her better judgement, Kara willed her feet to move forward and scooch past the woman who’d so graciously allowed Kara a path. Albeit a small one at that. 

They twisted around one another as Kara tried to avoid stepping on the woman’s expensive looking heels. With her shoulders hiked up to her ears and her feet preoccupied with the task at hand, Kara found herself peering into eyes of a peculiar color. Maybe green. Maybe grey. Maybe one was faintly more blue than the other. More likely it was a trick of the light. She smiled awkwardly as they both turned and Kara found herself on the other side of the woman. 

“Sorry,” she said. 

“Don’t worry about it,” the woman replied, already stooping down again. 

Something about the exchange felt unfinished, the beginning to something more. It felt a little bit like catching somebody in a lie and as a journalist, Kara trusted her instincts to follow that lie to its truth. But the woman ran one finger along titles and authors on the bottom shelf and Kara didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t be terribly uncomfortable. 

So she did what any sensible person would do.

She walked away.

In the history section, Kara stared at a few spines without taking in their titles and shuffled back and forth between European History, Asian History (Southwest China), and Asian History (Vietnam). She hummed and hawed, took a step one way before stopping and berating herself then took a step the other way. Frustrated, she decided to double back to science and mathematics with purpose, but when she rounded the corner, the woman was gone. 

Kara picked her head up and looked around the bookstore, toward the cash register where Lauren was still doing the inventory, toward her sister who stood reading, toward the front door. She swiveled and saw the woman in an unexpected part of the bookstore, a corner Kara had never ventured towards. A corner she ignored and put out of her mind altogether. 

Poetry.

She couldn’t help the face she made, could feel her mouth tug downward at the sight of it. She walked toward a shorter shelf (labeled as current political events) and pretended to look at its contents as she observed the woman (the smiling, wonderful face of Michelle Obama soothed the growing furrow between her brows). 

The other woman already held two thick volumes in her palms, but she craned her neck to look up at the shelves of poetry. Kara watched her tilt one way and then the other, scanning for something until she found it. The book she pulled was particularly worn, looked as though the cover would fall off if you glared at it too hard. Even from her suspicious perch, Kara could tell that the pages were yellowed with time and the red cover must have once been vibrant, but now had that dull, matte look as if it were left in the sun for a number of years. 

A dusty pink colored cover from a poetry section could only mean one thing. Love poems. Kara grimaced. The woman turned around and Kara jerked to stoop at the base of her political events station. After a bit, the woman’s heels clicked across Lauren’s aged floorboards and toward the register. Kara felt suddenly nervous. It was inexplicable, the reason for her sweaty palms and elevated heartbeat. She shot up to her feet and looked toward the purposeful footfalls of a beautiful lady who’d knocked the words out of her, completely at a loss with what to do next. 

“Lena, right?” Lauren asked, removing her glasses as she did so.

“Good memory,” Lena said, a small but tight smile on her face. 

“Well, it’s not often I have to special order academic journals,” Lauren said. She bobbed her head from side to side, something she did to let people know she was joking and not actually inconvenienced by their orders. She took the three volumes from Lena. “Just these today?”

“I think so,” Lena said and she looked around as she did so.

Kara saw the moment they were about to make eye contact and ducked down again. This time, she knocked her hand against the top shelf and a number of books somehow went flying with surprising force. On the floor, Robin DiAngelo’s _ White Fragility _ grabbed her attention so quickly it felt like a personal attack from the universe itself. 

“Kara,” Lauren called, without looking up. She rang up Lena on a somewhat antiquated cash register, though the shop also accepted card payments. “Those go in alphabetical order by author.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kara replied, hastily swiping up books that had flown more than a few feet away. As Kara concentrated on putting the books in the right order, she missed whatever conversation Lena and Lauren might have had as they finished up their transaction. She shoved one volume between another, finishing up, and shot to her feet. Lauren was handing Lena a receipt and they laughed about some shared joke and then Lena walked out the front door, the windchimes outside tinkling a melody. 

“Cat got your tongue?” Alex said. 

Kara jumped, slightly. Alex was staring at her smugly and Lauren had her glasses back on, shaking her head, an amused smile on her lips. 

“What’s the matter with you?” Alex needled. 

“Nothing’s the matter with me, what’s the matter with you?” 

Kara felt her face redden and willed it to be a light pink instead of the deep blush of rose she could feel creeping down to her neck. What was the matter with her? Certainly she wasn’t… _ enamored _ with a mysterious woman who came into used-bookstores to buy saccharine poetry collections. Of course not. That would be incredibly absurd. Kara hated poetry and didn’t like to read. It was as simple as that. But Alex still looked at her with an eyebrow cocked and the hint of a smirk playing on the edges of her mouth, so Kara huffed like a normal adult woman.

“Are you done? Did you find what you wanted to buy?” she asked. 

“Nah,” Alex shrugged. She jammed her hands into her pockets. “Nothing today.”

Kara rolled her eyes. “Are you serious? All this time and you’re not going to get anything?”

“I’ll get something next time. We’ll probably come back tomorrow,” Alex said. It was true. Their favorite Sunday brunch spot was right around the corner. Alex couldn’t resist dragging Kara in after she’d been sated with a large stack of pancakes topped with warmed maple syrup and a handful of strawberries expertly sliced and plated by her favorite chef, Carlos. 

Kara huffed, already knowing Alex’s plan to ply her with too much sugar too early in the morning to say no. 

“Lauren doesn’t even put out new stock between today and tomorrow and I only know that because we come here so often,” Kara complained. 

“I might change things up,” Lauren said. She shrugged her shoulders. “Someone could drop by with a large donation. You never know.”

“See Kara? You never know,” Alex said. She smirked, all thin lipped and victorious. Kara wanted to respond, thought to really lay into her sister right then and there, but she just rolled her eyes. It wasn’t the absolute worst way to walk off a pancake hangover. 

\--

“I think I ate too much.”

  
“You always say that whenever Carlos works because you always end up ordering two short stacks,” Alex said. She pushed the door open to the bookshop with one shoulder. “And then we leave here and you pass by the coffee shop and get a donut on the walk back to your apartment.”

Kara patted her own stomach. 

“I might be serious this time,” she said.

Alex snorted but didn’t say much else, just made a b-line toward modern fiction while Kara sulked toward the comfy chairs, hoping Saunders was around to keep her preoccupied. Much to her chagrin, however, that bushy black and white tail was nowhere to be found, and even when she strained her ears, Kara could not hear the telltale sign of Saunders’ little paws click-clacking around the store. She plopped into an armchair with a sigh and looked around, exaggerated boredom painted on her face just in case Lauren decided to pop back up toward the register.

Her eyes flitted across the store’s many colorful signs, signifying which books were kept in which sections. She sometimes liked to find things in the history section, especially unpopular titles about rarely heard of places. As a journalist, her penchant for non-fiction was obvious, but she enjoyed ancient history almost like it was a guilty pleasure. Learning about the decimation of cultures and what was left in the wake of their efforts to preserve what little they had was a complicated enjoyment for Kara. In fact, to say that she “enjoyed” that kind of reading felt like the wrong use of the word. It’s true that those were things she often gravitated toward when reading, but the fallacy of language was that connotation couldn’t encompass the complexity of her true emotions toward a subject. 

Other pieces of non-fiction either held her interest immediately or didn’t at all. It was hard work admitting that she was a journalist who didn’t necessarily enjoy reading. She did read—this was true, and she read with quite speed, but what she read was difficult to pin down. There were a few memoirs she was captivated by (Myriam Gurba’s _ Mean _ and Tara Westover’s _ Educated _ came to mind) and even some historical fiction she enjoyed (Elizabeth Wein’s heart-rendering YA novel _ Code Name Verity _ was a title she’d recommend to anyone), but she didn’t read critically acclaimed _ literary fiction _ the way Eliza did (how did Eliza slog through Cormac McCarthy’s _ Blood Meridian _?). And she didn’t have a penchant for sci-fi and fantasy the way Winn did (and Alex secretly harbored). 

She read newspaper websites. She kept up with current events and read the odd study on things that piqued her interest. She very much enjoyed the side of twitter that was all space geeks and science nerds who flipped out over rocket launches. She read a lot of things online, remembering prominent (and sometimes funny) names like Caity Weaver (whose pieces spanned a range that included a profile on Gal Gadot anyone could relate to and that time she tried to find the end of TGI Friday’s Endless Appetizers) and Mira Gonzalez (who Kara was almost horrified to find out was also a poet). Whenever Alex berated her for being on her phone at the dinner table, it was typically because she was reading something. 

But those somethings were mostly informational. Kara didn’t have a love of reading per se but she did love the pursuit of truth and knowledge. Figuring out the way the world worked was a noble adventure, but she felt that that pursuit’s best road was one that led down a road of non-fiction, that eschewed flowery prose. Truth could sound pretty, but it had to be the truth. And even then, she found that in her own writing, words were so convoluted. A journalist had to be incredibly careful about the connotations of a word despite a word’s defined meaning. Even in connotation, bias could be found. 

She kicked her feet against the chair and tapped her fingers against the armrest, trying to look forlorn but probably coming off as a petulant teenager lost in a sea of words. If she looked sad enough, maybe Alex would take pity on her and they could leave so she could get a donut and Alex could get a coffee. 

“You really don’t have to carry all that.”

“It’s no problem. You’d be amazed at what kind of a work out someone gets from stocking a bookstore for a living.”

Lauren and that beautiful woman whose name Kara remembered to be Lena came out from the backdoor. Usually Lauren let customers in when they had an order she’d put aside but they were more familiar with the spine of the book than she was. Kara tracked them both as they walked across the shop, Lauren’s arms full of two massive tomes. Lena was wearing a pencil skirt, her high heels making nice, sharp noises against the floorboards. Her lips were painted a distracting shade of red which only seemed more brilliant juxtaposed over her pale skin. Kara wanted to interact with her in some way. Like if this were bar, she’d just up and buy Lena a drink. But this wasn’t a bar and there were no drinks being served.

Before she knew it, her feet were moving of their own accord. Who cares if this wasn’t a bar? Just because buying people a drink in bars was a social norm, why couldn’t she make something else a social norm? She could feel her palms start to slick with sweat as she made her way over, suddenly nervous. She thought about Stendhal Syndrome. She thought about words and how they were so stupid. 

“Oh hi, Kara,” Lauren said with a smile as she approached. 

“Hi,” she said. Lena turned to look at her, the red of her mouth curved upward in a smile Kara wanted to attach with words like gracious and beautiful and radiant, words that held the connotation of goodness and lightness. 

“Do you need help finding something, or?” Lauren asked. 

Kara cleared her throat and adjusted her glasses. 

“Actually, uhm. I was wondering.” She angled her body slightly, looking but not looking into Lena’s eyes. “Maybe, I know this is weird—but can I buy your books for you?”

Lauren and Lena’s eyes both lit up with surprise, the latter adding a well-manicured eyebrow into the mix. Kara huffed and pressed on.

“N-not like you look like you can’t afford your books. Or that you look like you know—you’re made of money! I was—I just thought like, if we were at a bar—I’d buy you a drink. But there’s nothing to drink here. Except the water jug Lauren puts out. But that’s not the same.”

Kara adjusted her glasses and smiled sweetly, having been told by Eliza that her smile could warm a White Christmas if she wanted to (Alex’s, on the other hand, looked as though she couldn’t melt butter if she held it in her mouth). 

The look on Lena’s face was amused and something else Kara couldn’t quite read. Was it trepidation or was Kara just projecting? Kara wanted to put a word to the color of Lena’s eyes. But it was perfectly caught between three different colors and Kara could only come up with words and phrases like moss and ocean after a storm and green sapphires. 

“I really appreciate the sentiment,” Lena said. Kara braced herself for the rejection. Lena looked like she was carefully picking her words, a look that Kara knew very well as a journalist. What did that look say that someone’s words didn’t? “I’d be very flattered if you bought me a drink at a bar.”

“A beer in this city is about $7. And even a nice cocktail can be had for around $15! I’m sure a book is within that price range,” Kara said, already rummaging around trying to find her debit card. If Lena had outright said no, she wouldn’t have pressed forward so eagerly, but Lena seemed to genuinely appreciate the thought. “How much could a book be?”

The register beeped as Lauren rang up one of the hefty books.

“Two-hundred thirty four dollars and sixteen cents,” she said. 

Kara started to sweat immediately. Did she even have $234.16 in her bank account to spare? Maybe she could put it on her credit card. She couldn’t exactly back out, especially not now that she had her card in her hand. And Jesus, what was this woman buying that cost that much just to print it on recycle bits of trees and bind it with plastic glue? 

Lena smiled, the tips of her teeth just visible between her slightly parted lips. She reached out and put a hand against Kara’s.

“I really do appreciate the sentiment. But I doubt you want to put a dent into your bank account like this one,” she said. 

Kara opened her mouth to protest, but her eyes slid back to the little green number with the total for just one of Lena’s books, so she deflated. Beaten by capitalism. Again.

“Maybe next time,” Lena said. “When I’m not buying a textbook.”

The price point suddenly made sense as well as the heft of the tomes Lena was meant to carry out. For all of her nervousness, Kara had actually felt kind of cool coming up with such a sauve idea to get someone’s attention at a bookshop. Now she just felt stupid. 

“Haha, sure, next time,” she said, already feeling her face getting hot with embarrassment. Stupid Alex and stupid books! She shuffled away quickly, steps a little too hard and in no certain direction. But she found herself in Science Fiction and Fantasy and huffed a sigh when she thought she was out of earshot from the cash register. 

“Smooth,” Alex teased. The bottom of her face was hidden behind a worn copy of Robert Jordan’s _ The Eye of the World _, its blue cover bent at the edges and its spine covered in beige cracks. 

Kara huffed again. She could faintly make out the ends of Lena’s transaction with Lauren. She felt so dumb, for just barreling over there and offering to buy a woman a book because that seemed like a thing one could just do. If the world opened up and sucked her toward its molten core, Kara would be grateful for it. 

The high heels clicked away and the door opened, the sound of wind chimes tinkling softly in the air signaling Lena’s departure. Kara ran her hands down the sides of her face, knocking her glasses off center. Alex tucked _ The Eye of the World _ under her arm and rolled her eyes, moving past Kara and onto another section. Kara followed like a somber ghost, still reeling in the too fresh memory of what a fool she’d made of herself. In reality, she hadn’t done anything terrible, but as she played over the few moments of interaction again and again her embarrassment conflated the experience to something monstrous and comical: it loomed in her mind, a growing stain, a flaw on her personality as a whole! Alex glanced at her sister while she walked through the stacks, knowing full well this was all going to be used as an excuse to eat an entire tub of ice cream before dinner that night. 

Alex made her way through fiction classics, thumbing through a few books by Orhan Pamuk on her way past (mainly _ Snow _ which seemed interesting and _ The Museum of Innocence _which Eliza had recommended to her and sat on her nightstand, but which she’d yet to actually start). Kara’s solemn shadowing cut short her usual meandering and she led them both back toward Lauren. 

“Adam loves this series,” Lauren said, scanning _ The Eye of the World _ with her barcode reader. The little machine beeped and out came a number closer to a cocktail than a dinner for 8 plus tax and tip. 

“I know it’s a big commitment since the series has 14 books but I dunno. I think it’s time,” Alex said. Lauren knew about Alex’s secret love affair with the science-fiction and fantasy sections. Of course she did. More than once, Alex had tried to tell Lauren that she needed to separate the two genres and while Lauren agreed, it was more common than not for customers to lump the two together. 

“It’s certainly a classic,” Lauren said. She wrapped up Alex’s purchase. “And Kara, Lena said she really would take you up on your offer next time. She seemed pleased anyway. Most I’d seen her smile, to be honest.”

Kara pouted but otherwise perked up from her friendly ghost impression. 

“Oh, it’s no big deal,” she said, the want to be nonchalant more evident than the faux nonchalance itself. She crossed her arms and Alex rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what I was thinking anyway.”

Lauren didn’t say anything to that and Alex held in whatever it was she wanted to say (which was probably well and good because the things she typically wanted to say were of little help in situations such as this). 

Kara mumbled something about books being a stupid, expensive hobby, her dejected demeanor bringing a frown to Lauren’s lips immediately. 

“Well, Saunders will always be around in the coming days if you want to pop in and see her,” Lauren offered. 

Alex thanked her and grabbed the first of _The_ _Wheel of Time_ series off of the counter and yanked Kara’s elbow along with her. They were going to needs donuts. And ice cream. And maybe, if things weren’t lightened up by dinnertime, a slice of pie for dessert, too. 

\--

It was months until Kara saw Lena again at the bookstore. 

She bounced back from her embarrassment quickly, no surprise there. It was difficult to keep away the sunshine of her personality, even when faced with an almost ethereal beauty who bought academic textbooks when she wasn’t perusing the dreaded poetry section. The sting of rejection (Alex’s voice nagged at her, _ was it _ really _ rejection? _) was a tiny, sudden prick of pain and then it was gone and Kara and Alex fell back into their usual routine of scrounging Lauren’s shelves for anything Alex suddenly remembered was “always on her list” while Kara complained and Lauren tried to get her to at least like some things to read. 

She tried a few things out, because she liked Lauren but she also liked Saunders and Kara felt like she owed this woman something instead of just sitting on her furniture, petting her dog, while Alex paid her proper patronage. Lauren still gave her the scoop on neighborhood insights and regaled all the social drama that was talked about in her store that she didn’t participate in (but could not help hearing). So Kara felt like she had to at least try.

Poetry, of course, was off the table. No amount of convincing could make Kara understand why poetry was read when music was, as the kids say, “right there”. 

Kara tried Japanese surrealism on Lauren’s recommendation, but couldn’t get past halfway of Haruki Murakami’s _ Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World _ which felt like two different stories she couldn’t quite make meet in the middle. It does, apparently, meet in the middle. Or at least toward the end that she had no patience to reach. Lauren tried something lighter, after that, something small-ish: Kazuo Ishiguro’s _ A Pale View of the Hills _ and though Kara finished it, she said it was bland. 

“But the twist,” Lauren said. 

“Oh, yea,” Kara replied. She shrugged. It was just alright. 

Alex tried other things, N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy, Patrick Rothfuss’s _ Name of the Wind _ , a similarly titled though extravagantly different _ Shadow of the Wind _by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Those never quite made the cut and Kara wasn’t particularly interested in the nuance of world-building. She was always somehow invested in the ways that the world was different from their own but in a degree that stoked annoyance rather than interest—for example, instead of being fascinated by magic, she found it prudent to complain about the force’s inconsistencies in power. If there was happy speculative fiction, perhaps she would have liked that, but she found that focusing on the bad in humanity was always a bit forced and clichéd. Why focus on all the bad in a fictional story? Why not focus on all the good? There was too much focusing on the bad in real life anyway. 

Then Lauren tried classic french literature, trying to appeal to Kara’s interest in humanity and interpersonal connections, but she deemed Gustave Flaubert’s _ Madame Bovary _ as dull as could be (“Why on gods’ green earth would I want to read 3 pages of excruciating detail explaining what the tapestries look like?”). And when Lauren tried to transition her into something more modern, Kara put her foot down and said no more. She’d read only if she wanted to and that was going to be as rare as a red sun. 

It was of no personal offense to Lauren, the fact that Kara did not, apparently, enjoy reading, despite spending so much time in her store. She found it quite amusing. As a bookshop owner, she fantasized about matchmaking her clients to books she’d read or shelved. _ The Little Paris Bookshop _ was, afterall, one of her favorite novels. But it was truly just a fantasy, as often times her clientele could tell her more about the books on her shelves than she had time for between running the shop and keeping inventory. Lauren didn’t lose sleep over the fact that she’d yet to recommend Kara’s “aha!” moment for reading. If it happened, it happened. She’d wait and see what it was, but she was a person who believed anybody could have their “aha!” moment with reading. 

It was during the lull of waned interest in what Kara would or would not read that Kara finally saw Lena again at Lauren’s store. When Kara laid eyes on the woman, she felt as if she’d always subconsciously been thinking about her, even if Lena was not at the forefront of her mind. She did not always think about Lena, but when she saw her stride through the front doors, she wondered how she could’ve thought about anything else. It was logical and illogical, and of course, it was quickly followed by the high-definition replay of her embarrassing gaffe that had taken place the last time she’d attempted to interact with the other woman. It tinged her cheeks red just thinking about it. 

But Lena was unbeknownst to Kara’s presence when she walked in. She bid Lauren hello and went straight for the social science and engineering sections, the clack of her heels making sharp, crisp sounds as she moved through the bookstore. Kara’s eyes tracked the woman, enraptured once again by the taut lines of Lena’s jaw and face, severe but with an otherwise soft quality to them. Like marble—the way it can look alive, breathing, those busts and scenes at the Getty Villa that sometimes seemed to inhale and exhale if you only just glanced at them. 

Alex met Kara’s eyes from one end of the shop, a smirking glint just over a shorter shelf. Kara huffed, turned around, and slumped herself into one of the chairs in the small reading area where she normally waited for Alex. She was not going to make a fool of herself a second time! It was ridiculous, to just have a crush on a woman because she was beautiful. 

But still. Kara could not help watch Lena’s elegant movements as she perused the bookstore. And perhaps elegant was too much of compliment; as Kara watched, it was clear that Lena was not as poised as she seemed. It was endearing to see the slight catch of Lena’s foot against the corner of a shelf, or the way she teetered before finding her balance as she lowered herself properly to look at something below eye level. She even pulled books out of the shelf with a snag, popping her hurt finger quickly into her mouth with a look of annoyance. 

The hard lines of her face and the immaculate way that she dressed (expensive looking coat that draped her figure perfectly and a blouse that _ almost _ seemed too tight but was clearly meant to look that way screamed bespoke) seemed to downplay her humanness. Whatever it was that Lena did, her appearance was as much a part of it as her skills. But there was something else about her, something else Kara couldn’t quite grasp about the other woman by just watching her—she carried herself in a deliberate way. The word deliberate popped into Kara’s mind, but she couldn’t quite figure out what it was that made her think about intention and purpose while she watched Lena wander about a bookstore. 

Of course, Kara tried to keep her watching to a minimum. Entranced might have been a good word but it held far too many creepy connotations, like she was hypnotized or otherwise unable to help her gawking. She was an adult woman—she didn’t need to stare. 

Which naturally meant that she was completely caught unaware when Lena plopped down into the armchair across from her, lost in her own thoughts about the nuance of desire and the line between leering and appreciation when Lena’s body sat firmly against the cushioned seat with a sigh. 

“Hello,” Lena quipped, patting a stack of books on her lap. She smiled. It was a nice, small smile that again made Kara think of words like deliberate and guarded. 

“Hi,” Kara said, sitting up suddenly. “Hi, I’m Kara.” She stuck her hand out. 

Lena glanced at it, a suspicious something flitting across her features before she slid her warm palm against Kara’s.

“Lena,” she said. She tapped a nail against one of the paperbacks in her lap. “We didn’t get a chance to chat the last time I saw you in here.” 

“Oh,” Kara said. She felt heat rise to her cheeks and her neck. “I didn’t mean to bother you—when I did that.”

Lena laughed, polite and kind but with some measure of practice to it. Deliberate. Intentional. 

“I thought it was refreshing, to be honest.” 

“Well.” Kara eyed the small stack of appropriately sized books in Lena’s lap. “I could buy you a book now. If you were, ya know, interested or something.”

The deliberate something in Lena’s smile smoothed out. It was replaced by something genuine, something Kara immediately felt was rare and should be treasured. It was in the tilt of Lena’s head, or perhaps the slight but significant lift at the corners of her mouth. The sun filtering into the store made Lena’s eyes look grey. 

“What if you bought me—oh, I don’t know; how about your favorite book?”

“I can’t read.”

There was a beat that spanned the birth, life, and death of whatever ego Kara possessed in the silence that ensued. The heat that blossomed on her neck and cheeks felt like an inferno, as if suddenly Lauren had decided to turn the heater on in the shop. 

But Lena thankfully, graciously, benevolently, laughed. 

“I mean—I can read. That’s not what I meant to say. I meant—you know. I was going to say ‘I can’t think of a favorite’ but then I didn’t want to seem dishonest, so I wanted to go for ‘I don’t read much’ and—”

Lena waved a hand in front of her face as if to beat away the air of embarrassment for Kara. Her laughed petered out into a sigh and a smile, her eyes wet and wide like she was enjoying herself, something that seemed to surprise Kara and Lena both, evident in the way they both settled back into their respective seats, looking at one another. 

“What do you like to read?” Lena asked. Kara would have preferred a number of other questions. A world of other questions. She would have preferred Lena to ask her about her thoughts on what happens after one dies or inquired about her relationship with her parents, but instead, Kara was given this question and so she looked around nervously, as if there were a wrong answer waiting in the stacks. 

“I read—uhm—the news, mostly. I like to get my news in text form. I don’t really like… enjoy sitting down to read, though,” she said. She reached up to play with a stray strand of blond hair. “It’s kind of a problem.” 

“A problem?” Lena’s gaze went up, seeing but not seeing: a thinking look. “I don’t see that as necessarily a problem.”

“Well, my sister thinks it’s a problem,” Kara said. She could see the back of Alex’s head, looking up toward Fiction (Classics). “I read fine, I just don’t… like books.”

“And yet I’ve only ever met you in a bookstore.”

Kara squirmed. “Alex loves this place and honestly, I really like Lauren’s dog.”

Lena laughed again, a sound that quickly became something of comfort to Kara, rather than a signal that she was being belittled. Lena’s fingers drummed out on the volumes still in her lap, but she did not look as though she were about to flee from this conversation. In fact, she crossed one leg over the other and rested her elbow against the armchair, squinting slightly as she looked at Kara. 

“So you like dogs and don’t like reading, though you can read,” Lena said. “And you’d like a socially acceptable alternative to buying a girl a drink at a bar to be buying a girl a book at a bookstore.” 

“Yep,” Kara said. “That’s pretty much me. Oh, and I really like sweets. What about you?”

One of those perfectly shaped eyebrows lifted and the smoothed, immediately. But the features of Lena’s face changed an almost imperceptible amount. Her chin raised, the lids of her eyes lowered, perhaps her nostrils flared, but whatever it was, it made the hard angles and lines in her demeanor come back. Not to a razor’s edge, but there was less softness in her than there was just a moment prior. 

“Unfortunately, I very much enjoy reading,” Lena said. But her voice had taken on a different quality, like parents catching children in a lie and giving them time to come clean before accusation. 

“Besides academic textbooks?” Kara asked. “Not that—reading is important! I’m not against readers. I’m pro-reading.”

That caused Lena to laugh once more, a slight crinkle of crows feet appearing by her eyes. 

“Yes, besides textbooks. I guess I can say I read very widely. I don’t like to stay in a certain genre, time period, or country for very long,” Lena answered, her voice friendly again, nonchalant. “But that makes me sound pretentious. I just love reading. I really love words.”

Kara made a face. 

“But they’re so… loose. They can mean anything or nothing. Like, there’s too much bias around each word—the entire English language builds meaning on connotation rather than definition.”

“Isn’t that the beauty of language, though?” Lena replied. She leaned forward in her seat. “What we say in speech can’t directly translate to text. We can try as much as we want, but writers only get an approximation of an event or dialogue or a scene. Even if we experience something in person, there’s body language, sarcasm, irony, context—communication is a difficult and beautiful art.”

“Is it so beautiful though, if our communication skills are stunted by the society we’re brought up in?”

“I think there’s something to be said about undoing what we were brought up to do or say or become.” 

Kara pondered that sentiment for a moment. 

“I suppose I can agree with that,” she said. “There is something beautiful about defining ourselves outside of labels or preconceptions.”

Lena’s smile was soft and warm, something entirely different than the expression she’d put on previously. It drew Kara in: this side of the woman she just met. One conversation and she was enamored. Endeared toward. Besotted with. 

“What are your least favorite things to read?” Lena asked. 

“Yuck. I can’t stand poetry.”

“Poetry! Of all the things to detest about words and reading, you hate poetry?” 

“Well, yea,” Kara said. “It’s like, why would I like poetry when music has everything that poetry has, but with all the fun of being music?” 

“The elasticity of language is so prevalent in poetry!” Lena said, almost aghast, like she was truly taking offense to this opinion and was likely to become defensive, but with a spark of mischief too, like she was egging Kara on, looking for a verbal spar. 

“I guess that’s why I don’t like it,” Kara said. She shrugged. “It’s like, fine, words have connotation and context. But poetry takes all of what little rules we have for communication and throws them out. One poet’s plums in an icebox are completely different from the next.” 

Kara’s answer seemed to satisfy Lena. It hung in the air between them. 

“I quite like that,” Lena said. “But to each their own. Personally, I think anybody who says that they don’t like poetry just hasn’t found the right poetry for them. It’d be like somebody saying… oh I don’t know, that they don’t like music.” 

“That they just haven’t listened to the right kind of music?” 

“Exactly,” Lena said. 

Kara pondered this. Pondered this and her tumultuous relationship with reading. Lena was right and it was the reason why Alex and Lauren and even Eliza continuously tried to get her to read something she liked. And she did enjoy things, but with seemingly no rhyme nor reason to them. Maybe, like free-form poetry, she didn’t need rhyme or reason. 

“I’d still like to buy you a book,” Kara said, when the silence between them had stretched and she knew their conversation would have to end eventually, but she wanted to delay its inevitable closure. “Even if it’s poetry.” 

“Sadly, I am not purchasing any poetry today,” Lena said. She rearranged the stack of books on her lap. “But I am purchasing this.” She held up a copy of something that looked like Alex would have pulled it off of a shelf in science-fiction/fantasy. The cover read _ The Lies of Locke Lamora _. It was the size of a mass-market paperback, the kind of size one would find in airport terminals. 

“Well that can’t cost more than $10,” Kara said, getting up so that she could accompany Lena to the cash register. She looked around casually for Alex and found the familiar shape of her sister’s head still wandering around the store. 

At the register, Lauren was typing away, her reading glasses on the bridge of her nose. When Kara and Lena approached, she slid her specs up into her hair. 

“Hey you two,” she greeted. “Ah, Lena, there was an issue with one of the journals you were trying to get. It’ll be about two more weeks, unfortunately. Will that still work for you?”

“It’ll have to do. I appreciate you tracking it down for me,” Lena answered and placed her books on the counter, purposefully leaving _ The Lies of Locke Lamora _ to one side. Kara shuffled from one foot to the next, absently scuffing the hardwood with her toe. 

“Did you find everything you needed today?” Lauren asked, scanning the first book.

“I did, actually,” Lena answered. “And, this one here has offered to buy me a book, despite the fact that I had to prod her memory about our last encounter.” 

“I didn’t need prodding!” Kara said, huffing, her cheeks already a tinge of pink. 

“You’re right, you were just hiding and I had to come and find you,” Lena said. 

Kara liked this playful, teasing woman. It was easy to talk to her—and it wasn’t lost on Kara, that their conversation was short but also complex. Nuanced. It was the kind of conversation one might have with someone they’ve been friends with for a long time, where the only things to talk about are the difficult things, the things that are well outside the realm of small talk. She was intrigued. She wanted to know more, to keep pestering this woman about her views on words and the world. 

Lauren rang up Lena’s two remaining books, things that were decidedly not poetry and then rang up _ The Lies of Locke Lamora _ separately. Never had Kara felt less smooth than when she pulled her wallet out and the mess of frequent customer cards and gift receipts came spilling out. 

“Adam quite liked this series,” Lauren said, waiting for Kara to fish her card out of the mess of her wallet. “I found it a little… male-centric, but it was entertaining.”

“I liked Leigh Bardugo’s _ Six of Crows _ so much. I needed a good fantasy heist to follow up,” Lena said. “I fly through all the YA stuff. We’ll see if Scott Lynch can’t slow me down a bit.” 

“You read YA stuff, too?” Kara asked. “Winn—my friend at work—teases me for it.”

“Of course! They’re usually easier reads and highly entertaining, if not a little predictable. I don’t need to slog through prose to feel good. Plus, there’s no real designation requirement for YA novels.”

Lauren nodded her head. 

“It’s all just marketing jargon,” she said. “Helps dads who ‘don’t talk to their kids but want them to read more’ find things in a generic section.”

“There’s plenty of wonderful YA fiction to read,” Lena said.

“And non-fiction,” Lauren replied. “Wait, why haven’t I tried giving you any YA stuff?”

Kara shrugged. “Bias.”

Lauren made a face, something that looked caught between self-revelation and self-beratement. 

“So this is a group effort, I take it?” Lena asked. Lauren and Kara looked between each other, confused. “Finding something for Kara to read?” 

“Oh yea,” Lauren said. “I’d say Kara is a customer but she mostly comes here because I’m convinced she likes my dog more than me.”

“That is not true. Although, Saunders is a very good dog!”

“Alex is the real reason I make money,” Lauren replied, joking. “That and your special orders, Lena. So far we haven’t found anything that’s really stuck with Kara.”

“What about _ Code Name Verity _,” Kara said, trying to find a defensive path, but knew that she would quickly fail. “I really liked that!”

“Kara, we suggested that to you nearly two years ago. Our track record has not been good.”

Kara glanced over her shoulder, hoping her sister would come to her defense, but Alex’s head was nowhere to be seen and probably by the graphic novels shelf. In her heart of hearts, Kara knew Alex wouldn’t come to her defense, but it was a nice thought to have while her chances of getting this woman to talk to her more seemed to be dwindling by the second. 

“She reads, she just doesn’t like reading?” Lena asked, turned fully to Lauren now. 

“Seems to be so.” Lauren shrugged. “I’ve never heard her like something so much it’s made her want to read something else.”

“I am right here!” Kara huffed. “I like… things. Some things I like to read. I just don’t… enjoy shopping for books or reading the backs of covers. Anything I read basically gets handed to me.” 

“What a puzzle,” Lena said. She seemed to be talking to herself more than either Lauren or Kara. She had a look of being caught somewhere in the middle distance, unfocused on the surroundings in front of her but focused entirely on something else, something internal, building to a solution. Within an instant, she was out of it. Her face smoothed out, her eyes came back into focus, and her mouth tightened into a smile. “Perhaps a love of reading isn’t for everyone.”

She hadn’t said it, but Kara instantly felt an imposing pressure, as if this quality of hers was a deal breaker. Deal breaker! She was thinking about deal breakers after talking to a woman for 15 minutes. All because her eyes were a color that Kara associated with clear ponds in wet, grey climates. Lauren handed Kara her receipt, and passed the book to Lena. She felt like she was running out of time and she’d yet to make a proper good impression. 

“Say,” Kara started. She tapped her nail against the counter quickly, nervous. “I’d love to chat with you some more, maybe I could get your number?”

Though it was her shop and her register, Lauren quickly made herself scarce, which Kara only vaguely noticed in her periphery, all sense of location and specificity slowly draining away as her senses honed onto the one anticipated answer she hoped to hear. 

Lena made a face, something borderline indescribable. It looked like surprise, but it morphed into something guarded, the way her mouth thinned and her neck elongated which Kara was beginning to understand was an intimidation tactic that Lena used to steel herself in a way. She was little. Well, not quite little and especially not with those heels, but the literal posturing Lena did didn’t seem to be born out of intimidation on it’s own. It looked like a defense mechanism. Like she’d been bullied her whole life by someone taller than her. 

Lena opened her mouth, seemed to think better of what she was going to say, and frowned.

“Would it be paranoid to say that we just met?” she offered, finally. 

“No, not at all,” Kara said, but she could feel the downward twinge in her jaw, the telltale sign of a pout, which she fought, hoping to not show so much disappointment on her face. It wouldn’t be polite or inviting, after all. “I get it, absolutely. I could be a total weirdo!”

“What if we… meet again here?” Lena offered. “My schedule is a bit hectic but you seem to be here all the time. Or is that a bit presumptuous?”

“Oh yea. I mean. Wait. Not presumptuous. I am here all the time. Because of my sister. Not that I don’t like the store. Or Lauren. I mean. Not that I come here just for her dog.” 

“How about next weekend?”

Kara glanced over her shoulder, her sister still nowhere to be found, Lauren standing idly by a shelf of books that were immaculately organized. 

“Yea! Next weekend—Alex doesn’t need convincing to make a pitstop at the bookstore after brunch,” Kara said. “We’re usually here on Saturdays.”

“Then I hope I run into you,” Lena said. She smiled.

Kara stuck her hand out sharply, and Lena only laughed when she shook it. Deal made. It was an odd gesture, sure, but it felt better than the lean in her body felt so inclined to do. 

“Bye Kara,” Lena said. “And thanks for the book.”

Kara watched Lena leave through the front door, barely even noticing when Lauren saddled back into her seat behind the register. 

“Never thought Dog Eared would be a date spot.”

“It’s not a date,” Kara said. “She didn’t even want my number.”

“It’s the maybe of a date,” Lauren replied. She put her glasses back on the bridge of her nose and started some inventory task on the computer. “At least she didn’t ask you to read poetry in exchange for her number.”

Kara groaned. Yes. At least there was that.

\--

“You act like you’ve never had a ridiculous schedule,” Alex said. She gripped the neck of her beer bottle between her fingers and took a swig before pointing at her sister. “Cut the woman some slack.”

“Maybe she wasn’t serious.”

“Maybe she’s not gay.”

“Okay, while that’s fair, she didn’t outright say no when I asked if I could have her number,” Kara said. She played with the rim of her glass and then the coaster that it was on top of. The condensation made the cardboard square warp and crinkle. 

“And you cornered her in a place she does business, maybe she’s just polite.” 

“Maybe she’s actually interested and also actually just busy!” Winn saddled up in the booth next to Kara, his own beer sloshing slightly out of his pint class. “I mean, we of all, people know—life happens.”

“You’re right,” Kara conceded. She slumped back into the booth, her hair and clothes catching on the fake leather in a way that reminded her of other people’s back sweat. She sat up straight again, propping her chin in her palm and looking dejectedly at Alex and Winn in front of her. The noise of the bar was surprisingly low for a Saturday. The sticky tables and floor were familiar, its divey qualities a comfort. 

“You buy anything cool?” Winn asked, turning to Alex, his hand gripping the wide mouth of his glass.

“Yea—found a like-new copy of _ The Three-Body Problem _,” Alex said. She showed him the cover. “I think it’s a UK edition.” 

“Oh, yea. Cixin Liu,” Winn said. He took the book and turned it over which Kara found ridiculous since the cover was matte black with some red, white, and silver lines. She knew you weren’t supposed to judge books by their covers, but wasn’t that exactly how marketing strategies for publication worked? How was anybody supposed to glean anything from that cover? He waved it at Alex. “Let me know how you liked it when you’re done.”

“Sure thing, bud,” Alex said, taking it from him and putting it back on the booth next to her, hiding it under her jacket.

“And what about you? Buy anything while you were waiting for love to happen?”

Kara pouted, crinkle forming between her brows, her bottom lip protruding just slightly. 

“She spent the whole time sitting in the corner by herself like a weirdo,” Alex said. 

“Until you sat with me!” 

“That’s only after I bought this book and felt bad for you but also wanted to leave.”

Kara huffed.

“You know,” Winn started. “You should really learn to love reading, then you could’ve stayed there forever.” 

Kara rolled her eyes and slapped her hands on the table top. 

“You’re both being mean. I’m going to refill my glass and when I come back, I hope you two are nicer,” she said. She got up and ignored the indignant snort Alex made. They could talk about science fiction for hours, something Alex would never really admit to. Winn egged her on too much to keep it entirely a secret, though. 

The bar was crowded. The noise level might’ve been low, but everyone crowded around the counter when M’gann was working. Kara squeezed through a couple people until she could saddle up against the counter properly and waited her turn, knowing full well that M’gann would get to her when she got to her. She bounced her foot against the rail underneath the counter.

“Do you come here often?” 

Kara turned, surprised by the lilt of the voice and the familiar quality to it. 

“Lena!” 

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist the opportunity for such a cheesy line,” she said. She seemed so delighted by herself, the crinkle of her nose and the smile that accompanied it, all teeth. Lena was shorter than Kara in a pair of sensible flats, but still impeccably dressed. “I didn’t expect to find you here.” 

“Oh, actually, I do come here a bit,” Kara replied. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and tried her best not to look like, as Alex would put it, a wounded dog. 

“I wasn’t avoiding you.” Lena bit her lip. “The day just ran away from me and I needed to get out for a drink. I didn’t even make it to Dog Eared like I intended.”

“It’s okay!” Kara put her hands in front of her, waving the air like something could literally be swatted away between them. “I’m sure you’re busy with whatever it is that you do that’s not… you know, hanging out at bookstores.”

Lena gave her a curious look, a slight tilt of her head to one side, but she smiled. 

“Can I buy you a drink?” she asked.

Kara’s cheeks warmed.

“I don’t actually drink,” she said. As if on queue, M’gann placed a glass of ice water in front of her without so much of a hi or bye. “I mean, sometimes I do.” She took her pint off the bar quickly and sipped at it before continuing. “But I’ve never been a big drinker. Even though I like going to bars.”

“You’re kidding me,” Lena said, her eyes slightly wide. “You actually like going to bars?”

“Is—is that bad? You’re here right now!”

“A bit for convenience yes! But if I could avoid people all together and have whatever I wanted at home, I think I’d stay in,” Lena said. “I couldn’t make a cocktail to save my life. And drinking whiskey by itself in my own home? That sounds like the makings of a very bad or very sad story.”

Kara laughed. “Why haven’t I ever seen you here?” she asked. 

“I’m actually new to the area,” Lena said. She propped her chin in her hand at the bar, hoping to catch M’gann’s eye and order herself a drink. “You really didn’t know?”

“How could I?” Kara said, shrugging. She turned away, waving her hand at M’gann who nodded and came right up. Lena ordered something in a couple words and then M’gann was shooting off toward the other end of the bar again. 

“I moved to National City a couple years ago but Alex has been here for a while,” Kara said, sipping her water too fast, self-conscious about its presence. “We grew up on the East Coast, though.”

“As did I,” Lena said. She relaxed against the bar. 

“I kind of miss seasons. Like actual winter? With snow?”

“I miss not standing outside for 20 minutes and burning in the fall,” Lena said, with a slight bit of self-deprecating laughter at the end of her statement. “I feel like all my best coats are going to go to waste.” 

“I just miss the excuse to bundle up under blankets without Alex telling me that I’m a human furnace.”

“And Alex is… your best friend? Sister? I’m assuming not girlfriend since you’ve asked me for my number, though I admit that makes me a bit biased to think only of monogamous relationships in the world.”

“Oh god.” Kara grimaced, something that seemed to start in her face and shudder through her whole body. “No: sister and best friend. Well. Adopted sister. I was adopted.”

“So Alex is the sister that thinks you should read more? That makes so much more sense now.”

“She thinks I only say that I don’t like reading because it makes me sound cooler, but that just sounds dumb.” Kara rolled her eyes. “If I wanted to lie and try to sound cooler, I’d probably say I was a Fortune 500 CEO or something.”

“Would that really be so cool?”

M’gann returned with a drink in a lowball, amber in color with a twist of orange peel floating atop a single ice cube. Lena took a sip and Kara noticed the way her eyes closed, how Lena seemed to relax into the drink with a slight slump in her shoulders. She left a bill on the bartop without another glance and the two gave way to other patrons, who looked tired and ready for a drink. 

Kara bumped elbows with a number of people, but Lena seemed to manage an air of distance in the crowd, like they were the sea, parting for her presence, only to close back in on Kara. They made it to an empty high top where Lena set her glass. Kara craned her neck, looking for her sister. Alex and Winn were talking with bewildering hand movements, which normally meant that they were arguing about the real world physics versus fake work physics of something they’d read together. Those conversations typically had Kara sitting at her end of her booth people watching anyway, so she didn’t feel too terribly about parking herself at a hightop with Lena in front of her—an opportunity for a semi-date. 

“So how’s that book going?” she asked conversationally. Lena took a sip of her drink before answering.

“Which one?” Then her eyes widened in understanding. “Oh! _ The Lies of Locke Lamora! _ I finished it a couple days ago.”

“You finished that entire book in just a couple days?”

“Sure,” Lena said. She smoothed down her blouse with her palm, a self-conscious tick. “I’m a fast reader.”

“Is that because you’re a student?” 

Lena’s bark of laughter was enough to tell Kara no, she wasn’t a student. But seeing the other woman laugh so suddenly and so fully felt like watching the sunrise, in a weird way. She seemed so serious with such hard edges, and yet when she laughed, she was soft as the petals of a flower. 

“So you’re not a student?” Kara asked, when Lena’s laughter petered and she wiped a tear from her eye, careful to keep the exact line of her eyeliner. 

“No, but that’s very kind of you to think so,” Lena said, still smiling. 

“Okay, then who else buys textbooks?” 

One of Lena’s brows lifted dramatically. “Professors?”

“No.” Kara, in the process of taking a sip before Lena had answered, slapped the hightop with the bottom of her pint glass so water sloshed out. “You’re a professor? Professors are… old.”

“I could be old,” Lena said. But Kara narrowed her eyes. “But I’m not. However, I _ am _ a professor.”

“Then you must teach literature or english,” Kara said, like she was stating fact. “I mean who else talks about the ‘elasticity of language’ or connotation of words with strangers?”

“Well, what is it that you do?” 

“I’m… I’m a writer.” Kara always had trouble owning her profession. It was incredibly difficult to tell people that she was a journalist or a writer and have someone take her seriously. Their follow up questions were usually snide and condescending or they were uninterested in what she actually penned. Alex kept telling her to be more confident about it. She made money writing. How could she not call herself a writer? 

“You’re a writer who doesn’t like reading?”

Kara huffed. “I’m a writer who doesn’t like words. I think words are difficult!”

“Words are very hard. Understanding might even be more difficult.”

“Yes!” Kara clapped her hands together, excited that someone else had come to the same conclusion she has in her musings on communication. “I know I’m supposed to say that writing without bias is possible, but I don’t think it is. And I don’t think we read without bias either. How many times have you compared a book you’ve just read to some other book by some other author?” 

“And it gets even trickier if you have to take into account cultural and societal norms. Class norms, even. Hell, the heternormative!” 

“So, you are an english professor!” 

But the excitement drained out of Lena’s face and she looked as crestfallen as Kara felt. 

“Maybe in another life,” she said, a tone that seemed to resonate something else, some kind of old hurt. “But no. I teach physics. I guess, more specifically, I teach a kind of physics.” 

“Oh,” Kara said. “I’m not sure whether I like physics more or less than poetry.” 

When Lena laughed, Kara pressed on. 

“Technically, I should like physics. I like math—and physics is just math but with more… stuff.”

“You enjoy music because it’s poetry with more stuff but you hate physics because it’s math with more stuff,” Lena said. It was a good summary and she seemed delighted by it, in a teasing kind of way. Kara’s contradictions didn’t bare annoyance the way it did when she talked to Alex. 

“And bars but without drinking. And sweets,” Kara added. 

“You’ve mentioned sweets before,” Lena said, a mischievous smirk playing on the edges of her lips. When she tilted her head, Kara knew right then and there—she would say yes to anything Lena asked. “Do you like ice cream?” 

“It’s only one of my favorite things to eat ever,” she answered. 

Lena finished her drink in one big gulp and set it back on the table top, the single ice cube already pooling under the leftover orange peel. 

“There’s an ice cream parlor by my apartment I’ve always wanted to try, would like you to take a walk and try it with me?” 

Kara didn’t want to tell Lena that she knew the exact shop and had been there many times with her sister, that she had a favorite seasonal ice cream during the fall from their menu, or that she had a favorite mainstay flavor as well. It felt conspiratorial, the way that Lena had suggested they get ice cream, like it wasn’t something she often did or thought to do and only when it was a real treat did she ever do it. How could Kara deflate that enthusiasm? So she agreed, with the caveat that she had to find her sister first and tell her that she was off with Lena. 

Alex’s surprise was only at the fact that they’d found each other at the bar. She barely bat an eye at the fact that Kara was going to leave with Lena. After getting her sister’s approval and ignoring Winn’s questions (“Her name is Lena? She’s here right now? Where? Did you come up to her or did she come up to you? Hey, where are you guys going? Don’t forget to be safe!”) she and Lena were out the door, walking and talking on their way to consume ice cream on a night that was, perhaps, too cold for most people to consider eating ice cream. 

Kara liked talking to Lena immensely, liked even more the way she had to glance slightly down to make eye contact with the other woman as they walked. She tried toeing the line between being too far and brushing elbows as they meandered down the sidewalk, avoiding the uneven parts and branches that stuck out to nab at ankles, and giving way to other nighttime wanderers.

Talking to Lena was easy. Listening to her felt like something Kara could do forever. The lilt of her voice and the slight, but audible accent made it easy for Kara to get lost in whatever it was Lena was talking about. At one point, Kara had the thought that Lena had a very good professor’s voice—something not too different from radio voice. 

Kara came to learn that the slight accent came from Ireland. Lena said she spent some time there before she was also adopted and went back as often as she could during summers. She talked about the mist, how it doesn’t rain in Ireland, it just sort of hangs in the air and becomes an inconvenience, but it doesn’t quite fall the way it does in National City, the way it pours in torrents on the East Coast. Kara listened as Lena explained the variety of Irish accents, how Dublin alone had at least 2, and that you could tell if you stayed long enough where someone grew up (whether north Dublin or south Dublin). Then she talked about the authors, the writers, the poets that made her love reading and stories. 

“Do you speak Irish?” 

“Tá an Ghaeilge deacair,” Lena said. It sounded beautiful in a weird, throaty kind of way. But Lena laughed. “Irish is difficult. I learned only a little, just to read poems by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. But Ní Dhomhnaill’s work has been translated by the likes of Seamus Heaney, so I don’t need to try too hard.”

“You learned Irish just to read poetry?”

“Translation is a wonderful and terrifyingly inexact science!” Lena said. She stepped over a loose slab of concrete and tripped a bit, but managed to catch herself on Kara’s arm, where she remained as she spoke. “Science can never prove something. It can only disprove things. All scientific theories are so because they have yet to be debunked. I think translation is the same—what prevails or what succeeds, succeeds only because something better has yet to be put into words.” 

Kara hummed in agreement. She would have liked to come up with more words like a proper adult human, but with Lena still holding her arm as they walked, it was difficult to think of anything but how nice they felt pressed against one another. 

“Of course, I’ll read anything by an Irish author,” Lena continued. “Northern Irish, too. The 2018 Man Booker Prize went to a Northern Irish writer for the first time in the prize’s history.”

“So you don’t just read poetry and old, dead people’s stories.”

Lena laughed, a sound Kara was always delighted to hear. 

“I read very widely. I could not stand Sally Rooney’s recently acclaimed _ Normal People _ , but I have a feeling I’m just not… straight enough to understand all its accolades. And right after I finished that, I was torn to bits by Roxane Gay’s memoir, _ Hunger _.”

“I’ve read a few of her essays from _ Bad Feminist _,” Kara said, trying to contribute to the conversation and not get swept away by the sound of Lena’s voice alone.

Lena nodded, her gaze lost in the middle distance like she was recollecting every word read and every page turned in Roxane Gay’s books. 

“I read nonfiction and fiction alike. Sometimes I have a hard time with science fiction, which is, admittedly, a bit of an occupational hazard. But I seem to enjoy things almost indiscriminately.”

McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams first opened in Santa Barbara in 1934 so as far as Kara knew, it wasn’t Irish, though the name begged to differ. She had no idea if the original McConnells were Irish immigrants, or if it was just random happenstance. What she did know was that she loved their banana and salted caramel, which was only beat out by their heavenly pumpkin pie. She’d tried other things, too, but what she liked, she liked. 

“Do you know what you’re gonna get?” she asked, leaning slightly toward Lena as they stood in line, behind a family with a few kids and a hipster looking couple with matching Doc Marten’s.

“I know this is strange, but I always order the same exact flavor no matter where I go.”

“What’s that?”

“Cookies and cream.”

“Of all the flavors!” Kara laughed. “You might as well get vanilla.” 

“I very much enjoy a good french vanilla, thank you,” Lena said, mock haughtiness to go with her statement. 

They ordered and took their scoops to go, one in a cup, the other in a cone (it was Lena who said she’d had too many incidents with a dropped scoop of ice cream to ever trust a cone again). Lena wrapped her arm around Kara’s tightly, holding her treat in front of her while they walked, and talked more about the things she’d read and why she read them and what she found so good about them. Kara wanted to listen forever. 

“If you only read one book of poetry for the next five years, let it be Claudia Rankin’s _ Citizen _ and if you have room for two, add Danez Smith’s _ Don’t Call Us Dead _.”

Kara’s contributions to the conversation might have seemed quieter than Lena’s but the way that Lena responded to having someone listen to her with such focus and intent—surely the woman had this kind of attention and command of conversation as a professor to undergraduates. But it was hard to tell. Or maybe, it was because she didn’t have to talk about her work or formulas or numbers that made Kara want to keep listening, that made Lena so impassioned. She was an engaged audience though, despite how much she just listened, how she attuned her entire being to listen to Lena talk about books she’d never read or only vaguely heard about. 

They exchanged views on the literary genre as a whole, whether or not it was a ploy to make people feel pseudo-intellectual to say that they read within “the literary genre”. They agreed on the distinction between science-fiction and fantasy and Kara pulled points from Alex’s rants to Lauren about the separation of the two, to which Lena enthusiastically agreed and expounded upon.

“They deserve their own sub-sections, too!”

Lena talked about the pride and accomplishment she felt as a young girl when she’d read something extremely difficult or extremely long, though noted that usually the difficulty or length of a tome did not necessarily correlate to one’s enjoyment (although she did love _ Gone With the Wind _ ; she provided _ Infinite Jest _as a counterpoint). 

“Some of my favorite reads have been shorter ones,” Kara said, thinking about the various articles she’d read by Caity Weaver or some of the essays that had stuck with her by Roxane Gay. 

“People say the greatest short story of all time is James Joyce’s _ The Dead _ .” Lena said, a look of annoyance on her face. “But I think it’s Carmen Marie Machado’s _ The Husband Stitch _.”

The breadth and scope of what Lena had read and retained astounded Kara. It was truly impressive to hear someone speak so openly about a variety of genres they’d read. Even things Lena didn’t like she tended to finish (“Blake Crouch wrote _ Dark Matter _like he’d never interacted with a woman before.”). Kara was so enamored with Lena’s adoration for words that they’d probably gone around the same block 4 or 5 times before Kara realized they were going in a circle. 

“I actually live right here,” Lena finally admitted, coming to a stop in front of a pair of gates that enclosed a smallish, well manicured front yard. She let go of Kara’s arm and touched the wrought iron of her gate. 

“Can I see you again?” Kara asked, because she did not want the night to end, because she had no idea how long they’d been walking and talking for and she couldn’t remember the last time that had happened to her, because she wanted Lena to tell her everything she knew about reading, every book she’d ever read or had an emotional connection to or learned something from. 

Lena tilted her head and her eyes caught the orange lamp light from the street, making her irises look gold, like molten ore, like a hazy sun, like warmth. 

“Yes,” she said simply, breathing the word as if she were the one asking. 

Kara touched Lena’s hand, resting atop the gate. She shuffled forward, moving and asking without using her mouth because she felt that if she said anything more, anything else that would come out of her would just be gibberish. Lena made things easy for her. 

Their mouths touched. It was like breaking the mirrored surface of a clear pond, tentative but also sudden. They were not touching. And then they were—just barely. So soft. So gentle. 

Wind blew leaves gently down the street, like some faraway stream. In the night, a dog barked. All that passed was time. 

Kara did not deepen the kiss, but seemed to hold Lena’s lips in her own like a gently caress. 

“I would like to see you again,” Lena whispered, the air from her words moving from her mouth against Kara’s. 

“Even though I don’t read?”

Lena chuckled, something soft and amused, almost as gentle as their first kiss. 

“Even though you can’t read,” she said. And then she pressed her lips back against Kara and kissed her fully, their bodies pressed against one another, two women alone on the sidewalk.

\--

Kara never really had a love affair for words the way most writers did. 

She didn’t sit and read and her memory was not a wild library of scenes from novels she’d read or lines she remembered. She found words to be finicky, found definition to be too reliant on connotation and context. They hid fact, in there amongst voice and tone. They could even lie when absent.

But Lena loved all things words. Loved to read more and understand better the experiences of other people through the writing that she read as if literature was a glass she could drink from when thirsty and she was always parched. 

Kara never really loved bookstores, but she went as often as she could with her sister and with Lena. Saunders and Lauren were happy to keep her company, while she played with the edges of the single book she found to take home and attempt to learn to love. She did not buy poetry, but she sometimes read poems that Lena had bookmarked and left on her nightstand while Kara sat in bed, waiting for Lena to wash her face and kiss her goodnight. 

One of these books of poetry was Anne Carson’s _ If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho _. Translations. Lena, from the bathroom, was telling Kara her plans for Dog Eared Books the next morning, how she would pick up the journal she’d ordered from Lauren so she could incorporate its quotes into her curriculum, and how she wanted to see if they carried any used copies of Susan Sontag. Kara flipped through its pages, the fragments rustling past like condensation down a windowpane. 

Kara never really had a love for words, but as Lena spoke to her in the bathroom, and their life seemed like a curious case of right place, right time, all because of books, all because of words, she was starting to reconsider. 

Lena rambled on, apologizing for stopping at Lauren’s so often. 

Kara reassured her. She loved Lena’s love for words.

Lena came out of the bathroom, got into bed, and kissed Kara goodnight.

Fragment 56 was the last thing Kara read before spooning Lena and drifting off to sleep, thinking about a love for words and what that could mean. She pulled Lena tight against her and in her sleepy state, she thanked Dog Eared Books for being the place she could fall in love. 

_ 56 _

_ not one girl I think  
_ _ who looks on the light of the sun  
_ _ will ever_  
_ have wisdom  
_ _ like this_

**Author's Note:**

> Perhaps you'll forgive me my transgressions upon knowing that this piece was written over the course of 2 years. The first quarter of it, the idea, its conception, was made sometime after I published "Hallowed Be Thy Name". And then I went to school, in Ireland, for an advanced degree in Creative Writing. And then I came back. I wrote my dissertation, and after I emptied my head and my hands of all the words I could, I was left needing to fulfill a sense of accomplishment in writing that was not related to my degree. 
> 
> Thus, some 12k words were added. 
> 
> All without having watched a single episode of Supergirl in the time of writing. So, I'm not certain how the characterization has held up, but I only hope that you enjoyed what you read. And perhaps, found a title or two you would like to learn to love. You can find a link to every piece of literature mentioned in this story here: https://janewithawhy.tumblr.com/post/188946068828/a-friend-asked-if-i-had-read-every-book-that-was
> 
> You can find me @janewithawhy pretty much everywhere, but I'll be most likely to respond on twitter.


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